User talk:Jams206
Welcome Hi, welcome to ! Thanks for your edit to the Ireland page. Please leave a message on my talk page if I can help with anything! Wolfbln (talk) 21:43, July 13, 2015 (UTC) redirected: about North America section sorry Jams206. I sent this to the wrong user before, as you have noticed :-) I was just going to contributions and found the Jamar#### comment on the US, which is not totally right by the way. Not all prepaid plans of T-Mob US are open to (free or +$5) data roaming in Canada or Mexico. The $30 plan for instance is not. Here is my text I sent to Jamar and is now redirected to you. about North America section Edit Hi Jams. Thanks again for your suggestions. Sorry, that I can't answer quickly, as I'm travelling SE Asia right now. I was thinking about a North America section for roaming SIM cards too. But - as you have said - there are not so many transnational travellers out in America than in Europe that will be addressed. And from the supply side, we have a quite different situation what the three countries (Canada, US, Mexico) are concerned. I think we agree that this page or add-on should only be for really good roaming options (like in the EU article), not for the usual overpriced ones. What do we have? Canada: about 5 prepaid offers from the US: T-Mobile, one AT&T plan, Cricket Wireless, Metro PCS add-on - but these offers we don't need to repeat for the US obviously, they are from the US for Canada. And about one offer from Mexico and 4 from overseas come to my mind. But there can be more, of course. I did same brainstorming and these are my results: use this link and add your ideas. Remember, we need to stick to prepaid. For the US: I don't know of any reasonable Canadian offer. Then we have the offers from MX, HK and Europe and some more like Three UK's Feel at home. For Mexico: I don't think that there are any good offers given the fact that data is quite cheap in Mexico on a local SIM. Summing up, we have a very different situation for all three countries given the fact that data is very expensive in Canada, more reasonable in the US and cheap in Mexico. This makes it very hard to combine it in an article. My proposal: We can first try to collect the offers for Canada as there a roaming SIM makes the most sense because the prices are the highest. Then we can move on to the US (and Mexico). Finally, we decide, if it's better to integrate this section in national chapters or put it in one seperate article. So the North America article is a draft. Feel free to add your infos. Cheers, WOLF Wolfbln (talk) 02:47, January 28, 2016 (UTC) (admin) So what do you think about it? Let us first collect the infos and later decide whether to put them into the articles of the specific countries or to make a new article. Vodafone Ukraine Hi Jams206 I'm back at home in Germany now testing this Ukranian SIM. It looks quite promising. Roaming was pre-activated (probably by the vendor) and it connects to Vodafone Germany 3G. I could top it up with an European credit card on their website. For data i'm going to check the default by day roaming option as well as a RED roaming package. I wonder if they really give out full 3G speed on Vodafone roaming. As soon as you have results with your SIM, please let me know. If testing is successful, I intend to add this SIM as 7th featured roaming SIM in the EU section. User 'Soloristretto' who is probably a dealer of these cards has again spammed all national chapters with its ads. I sent him a message to be patient: User_talk:Soloristretto and deleted his comments outside of the EU and Ukranian chapters. It would be great to get your feedback about this SIM as well, as it gives really great rates for data (and text and voice) in SOME EU countries, Albania and Turkey. Thanks for all your help WOLF Wolfbln (talk) 07:32, February 15, 2016 (UTC) (admin) Hi Wolf, I got my SIM and tested it a little. It looks to be activated but used several minutes to activate on the roaming network, but finally I got an SMS with roaming info and also the number of the Ukrainian embassy. It was already on the Red S domestic plan and the per day roaming plan of 30 UAH + 10UAH/500MB. I think the SIM comes with some credit for the initial month domestic service, so it doesn't come from first top up. Dialing *101# gives the SIM expiry date one year after today along with the balance, that is very nice. I had one unexpected problem, no data connection initially. For some reason the APN wasn't set default on my iphone. I filled it to "internet" as the ukraine article suggested, and now it works. I wonder if some fix like rebooting would have worked too. You want to know about speed: it is definitely 3G only. It seemed about normal for 3G UTMS and a bit slow for HSDPA. It doesn't support LTE at all even where their partner does. Definitely all data is routed through their server in Ukraine, but this practice seems common among all data roaming SIM's. Actually AT&T used to do the same in the US where all data was routed through one common point, that is terrible for latency. Given all, I don't think it's throttled. But, it's not quite the speed of a local SIM. I tried VoIP too, by Google Voice. The good news is that it's not blocked. The latency is a bit imperfect. But, most person using VoIP is used to such things when traveling. I am confused on one part. It is unclear whether the domestic Red S plan self renews each month or not. The message says "оновлення пакетів" or "package renews" then gives a date a couple weeks away. I guess that another 30 UAH is deducted on that date? Jams206 (talk) 09:02, February 16, 2016 (UTC) Vodafone Ukraine on roaming Hi Jams. I can confirm most of your observations. I had essentially the same. So if we feature this SIM on the WIKI, there needs to be some explanation given or we'll get a lot of questions from the users. 1.) Starter pack is always on a domestic RED S plan (for UAH 30) 2.) Original APN is wrong and needs to be adjusted manually to 'internet' (this may be a challenge for some) 3.) It seems to be unthrottled 3G speed for roaming. I will compare it to an domestic Vodafone MVNO later, but I got 7 Mbps/ 1 Mbps DL/UL which is OK for 3G and seems not to be downgraded. No 4G/LTE, but I didn't expect this 4.) I also checked the default roaming by day rate so far: 30 UAH per day - It's based on the 24 hour clock in the Ukraine plus 10 UAH for 500 MB. Actually this is a very good day rate after all: 10 UAH are 0.33€ and all calls at 1.5 ct per min. That is crazy. 5.) Balance check by *101# seems to be quite delayed 6.) Thanks for your VoIP check, we need to check tethering too - but I don't think it's blocked. You might as well check out your personal profile (in English) as all status messages are in Ukrainian too. It's very hard to find as it's through their old MTS Ukraine brand. Their "Internet helper" is found here: https://ihelper-prp.mts.com.ua/SelfCareUA/Logon. It needs to be https not http! For registration you need your first PUK. Top-up was going through smoothly with an European credit card on their 3rd bank option through the Vodafone UA site, but failed on the 1st. It took a few minutes to be credited. No surcharges on behalf of the UA side, probably some currency conversion fees from the credit card or bank. Now, we come to the tricky part: I really don't fully understand Vodafone's RED packages so far. You are always on a (domestic) package, unless you run out of credit for auto-renewal. So there seems no way to stop them otherwise, which is not so good for occasional roaming, much better for permanent roaming. They say you can change by USSD command to RED M or L. or change back...But you'll always stay on a RED plan. This is similar to Vodafone RED in other countries (and many offers in the US). I assume by activating a monthly roaming RED package (by *600#) , the equivalent roaming pack S, M or L will be activated as there seems no other choice for a roaming package. So you'll always need to be on the appropriate domestic plan S, M or L before, to activate the roaming pack. So that's why it's misleading to just quote the price of a roaming pack UAH 90 for S, UAH 150 for M or UAH 270 for L. In the end roaming on RED packs costs the domestic package price of UAH 30, 50 or 90''' plus the roaming pack. I think the vendors are not very honest with that. But UAH 200 (€6.64) for 2GB or UAH 360 (€12) for 5GB is still very good and below many domestic rates. I wonder how they charge the RED package when you change in the middle of a monthly billing cycle like from S to M or L (e.g. to expand your roaming pack). Are credit and allowances lost and the 30-day cycle starts new? I will change in a couple of days and report it. This is quite unclear to me yet. But I still think this is a very promising product and it needs to be featured like Euro1 to 6. These issues that we have found so far are manageable: - wrong APN preset - must be changed manually - status messages in Ukrainian only. - Online account is (partly) in English, but hidden under a different brand - billing of RED packs is not fully clear yet (at least to me) - you are somewhat restricted to the roaming pack equivalent to the domestic package - good choice of daily (default) roaming rate and monthly rate. But as soon as you have chosen the monthly pack you need to stay for 30 days and can't return to a daily rate - network selection must be locked to Vodafone as these rates are not given through Vodafone's other roaming partners (except in Poland). As my SIM has only MTS as predefined preference, it can easily switch to other networks if you choose automatic network selection. - in the small print they quote caps for daily data allowances (but these are quite high) - i haven't found any overuse fees. I think that their "standard conditions" will apply. But a SMS to all destinations is at 0.5 UAH, that's 1.5 ct and a minute domestic and a voice to all roaming zone countries at 1.5 ct per min too. I don't dare to publish these rates yet, as they are far below most domestic text and call rates. We must be pretty sure about them. Some Ukrainian vendors want to place this SIM on Amazon stores worldwide as http://prepaid-data-sim-card.wikia.com/wiki/User_talk:Soloristretto (whose friend :-) is a dealer) has told me. He is OK that we only direct users to the distribution platforms. I wouldn't link to a special dealer. He has calmed down now, after he spammed all countries where this SIM is roaming and I had to take it off again. I think this is a product for the more advanced user like the SIMs we show on Euro1 to 6. I mean buying this product at 50 UAH (1.66€) in the Ukraine and reselling it through eBay/Amazon for €10 is not a rip-off. I've seen much worse cases here. They need to activate it, add handling, shipping, eBay/Amazon and PayPal fees. So it's still reasonable, but I hope price will eventually come down with more competition. Keep me updated about your testing. I will give you a draft of my featured site of this SIM in a couple of days for checking. ---- My eBay seller confirmed the APN situation, it seems universal. Also, the vodafone claim appears to be that Red S does not autorenew every month, but instead always activates from the first activity (call, SMS, data) and it's not clear if nonchargable events like incoming SMS activate the plan. If there's not 30 UAH credit, then it charges 3 UAH per active day until credit is exhausted. At this point, it seems like incoming service only allowed. If this is the case then it appears good, since activation of the Red S can be avoided when it's not needed. The vodafone website claims that you can change domestic plans mid-month from Red S to Red M for 20 UAH and Red L for 60 UAH. Surely, they must also charge 60-150 UAH when you change Red S to Red M while roaming. *101# is a bit slow, but this doesn't seem unusual. My current Vodafone Ireland SIM can be instant or use up to 10-20 seconds to respond to *174# for balance check while roaming. Jams206 (talk) 10:41, February 17, 2016 (UTC) Update about Ukranian Vodafone SIM Hi Jams. This Ukrainian SIM card is really fascinating. I've never seen a prepaid SIM/plan like this. It took me hours to understand their rates and I'm still not quite sure about all of them. I've found the first hidden catch though: to book a RED # roaming package, you need to activate it by *600#. As I assumed, you can only activate the equivalent bundle. You don't really have a choice. I haven't found any way to do it online. This can be done on a (Vodafone) roaming network. But as soon as you connect the SIM to roaming, it charges UAH 30 service fee (without data activated). So you actually have to buy a daily roaming pack for UAH 30 (plus possibly 10 UAH for every 500 MB) to get a RED # roaming package for a month (30 days). This may be OK for doing it once. But I think, that their RED roaming packages don't auto-renew. I haven't found any information about it. So it's once-off for 30 days and on the 31st day the same game for activation starts anew. Only alternative is to activate the roaming pack on an Ukranian network, but not for us. This scheme is a bit annoying.... But there is very good news too, if you look at their rates. Essentially, you don't need to switch to RED M or RED L for roaming, because of their very low overuse fees. These are actually cheaper for roaming than booking a larger plan: RED S costs 30 UAH domestic plus 90 UAH for the roaming package containing 500 MB, 30 mins and 30 SMS/MMS for a month. RED M has 2 GB, 50 mins and 50 SMS/MMS. But check their overuse fees on roaming too: 10 UAH per 500 MB and 0.5 UAH per min/SMS/MMS. But using overuse fees you pay for 1.5GB, 20 mins and 20 SMS/MMS extra: 30 + 10 + 10 = 50 UAH. Their RED M pack on roaming costs 50 UAH domestic and 150 UAH roaming surcharges = 200 UAH. The same allowances on RED S (120 UAH) plus overuse fees (50 UAH) less. Same story is with the difference between RED M and L. The only reasons for changing to a larger pack can only be their volume caps in fineprint: 5GB/7.5GB/10GB on REDS/M/L or intensive use of Facebook ,Instagram, Twitter, Viber or Whatsapp, not debited on RED M/L. But they exclude VoIP from the free allowance and I think it's not worth it. As far as I understand it, the UAH 30 daily service fee is not charged for roaming as long as you are running a RED roaming pack. I've now booked a RED S roaming package and see what happens. For 2 questions I still don't have a clue: - can a domestic RED plan really be set to "dormant mode" by not using it as you have suggested? Normally on Vodafone's RED plans, you are always on a (domestic) plan, that can only be discontinued by running low on credit. I rather expect that their domestic RED # plan auto-renews after 30 days, if there is enough credit, while the roaming add-on is once-off. One thing is sure, that you can only book a roaming RED pack on a domestic RED plan. To really find this out, we need to wait until 17/2/16 when my RED plan expires to see if they auto-renew rightaway. Do you have reliable information that this needs to be stipulated anyhow (by connecting to a network) and thus can be delayed? Because I don't want to wait another month to publish this article, when we'll know for sure. - even this is a data WIKI, users will ask about voice and text. I had this with Euro5 and I almost lost my mind. But at rates around €0.015 per SMS or min voice, it's really interesting if they include all "Roam like home countries" meaning all calls (landline and mobile) within the roaming zone. I'm going to place some roaming calls within Germany and other countries of the zone in the next couple of days to check, if they are really included. Given the current exchange rate of the UAH of 1:30 against the Euro, you can have 5 GB 3G data for a month for 30 (domestic) + 90 (roaming) + 9x10 (overuse) = 210 UAH or 7€. A daily roaming pack is sold for €1/30UAH (service fee) + €0.33/10UAH per 500 MB. This is below domestic rates of most countries (except in Poland). ---- Firstly on the website profile that I just signed up for, there's an option "Services->All Services->Red S for a month" with "connect/disconnect" options. It might be possible to use this to stop auto-renew. But even more directly, on https://www.vodafone.ua/en/personal/tariffs/prepaid, there is a section which says "The cost of the Vodafone Red tariff is charged monthly from the date of the first call" which also isn't entirely clear. To know for sure I'll let my domestic plan expire and see what happens. Since it was booked by the seller, it won't be a full month, only about a week from now. Jams206 (talk) 19:47, February 17, 2016 (UTC) Article: Vodafone Ukraine Hi Jams. I've spent part of this weekend drafting the new feature article about this Vodafone Ukraine SIM card. I've never seen prices like this in Europe. This SIM has a lot of potential, but the tariffs with base plan, roaming add-ons, enabled and disabled "Roam like home" are very complicated. And you really need to understand them to use it to your benefit. Some vendors are not very honest about the rates either. But I think I've collected all options now, as users will have many questions otherwise as I know from previous presentations. Please check the draft version of this article page Euro0. It's not linked yet. And I want to get some feedback before. As you have used this SIM too, you may give some suggestions and corrections. I will also send this to some of the vendors. After all they (not me) will benefit the most, if it will be featured here, as hardly anyone will travel to the Ukraine for it. Still, two questions remain unanswered to me. I added them to the bottom of the article. I know, you are working on one. So give me your feedback, as soon as you now if a domestic RED plan can be disabled. Thanks for your feedback and your work for this Wiki. Cheers WOLF Wolfbln (talk) 14:07, February 21, 2016 (UTC) (admin) about a US addition Hi Jams. As you seem to care for the United States article. We have a new addition made by "Crave555" : "'''Arieli Mobile" IT reads on their homepage: Arieli Mobile, was founded in 2015 by a group of friends who as tourists were frustrated with the difficulty of choosing across many different cell phone plan offering in the United Status. We share a passion for simplicity, richness of offering and providing an amazing client experience. That is why we offer only a few great choices from established US Cell Phone operators. Since starting Arieli Mobile company we’ve been working with clients worldwide who are all looking for temporary plans within United States for their travels. We offer 8-10 day international shipment of our pre-loaded sim cards. Unlike other SIM card sellers, our cards are quickly activated by clients on t-mobile.com website. Arieli Mobile Brooklyn, NY arielimobile1 I mean I consider these lines amusing, but have problems with their offer: To me it looks like somebody from Brooklyn is reselling just two T-Mobile Simply Prepaid plans. That's all. It can't stay at this position of the article and actually Arieli is not a MVNO like all the other offers on that level. So what do you suggest to do about them? Looking at their rates, it's not a bad deal. But going through order procedures the sellers stays anonymous for all the time? Is this still legal in the US? You are linked to PayPal and don't really know where the money is going to.... I might even be a scam. Should we risk having this offer on the list? How real is it that somebody resells discounted T-Mobile Simply Prepaid Plans? So what should we do about it? One is for sure, it can't stay like this. Greetings WOLF Wolfbln (talk) 22:20, March 10, 2016 (UTC) (admin) Thanks WOLF. I do know a lot about the US networks and have used all of them,though not all MVNO's of course. I think I know what is happening here. AT&T, T-Mobile, and most MVNO sell their SIM and plans through their own stores and also third party shops. The third party shop can be as simple as a grocery store that sells SIM packs in their checkout lanes, or an independent phone shop that sells many phones and carriers and can help you book a plan, or even the Apple stores which also sells SIM cards and plans. These shops have a semi-official relationship with the network/MVNO where frequently they get heavily discount or free SIM cards and activation kits. They may also get a fraction of the first plan that's booked. Here is where I guess Arieli is doing; if they have enough volume of sales, where they now get free activation kits from T-Mobile and a substantial fraction of first month plans. Then they can be entrepreneurs: offer international shipping, pay from themselves to T-Mobile the full cost of the plan, then split the seller's rebate with the buyer, and undercut the official price. I think this shows a first catch: I think to renew these plans, the buyer will pay T-Mobile's full price. Now, is T-Mobile happy or even aware of this? Maybe not either. I guess they simply don't care for now. SIM cards are insignificant cost. Depending on the area code, T-Mobile may not like that many one month only customers occupy up their phone numbers, but those are quickly recycled too. US networks also often care much more about their postpaid customers. T-Mobile has these problems in their own stores too but now charge a substantial activation kit fee to discourage these short term uses. If it seems sketchy, I think it seems like this business is some guy operating from his home. It probably saves a lot of money, as any compensation from T-Mobile is likely meant to pay for a physical store costs. It's not completely anonymous, as they seem to have a facebook page where they give address and phone. I don't think you can tell by the payment method. It's somewhat common in the US for merchants to accept PayPal like this. You usually get contact information after finishing the transaction and it's possible to challenge the seller if they don't deliver and get a refund. Of course, we would not know absolutely for sure until someone tests it out, as I'm simply guessing how such an offer can be made profitably. Now what to do about these resellers? I know you had some mess with the Ukraine offering also. Here is what I would do. Individual country articles are only: basics/activation/validity/top-ups, networks/MVNO/plans, roaming offers, and how to buy at physical stores in that country. Third party offers in country articles, are banned in guidelines. Then create a separate page to list tested/untested online resellers with useful special offers like international shipping or discounts, expressly noting there is no official endorsement. At this point there are not that many and all of them can go on one single page for all countries. Even on eBay and Amazon, it seems like only a dozen or so EU countries are sold, plus North America, Russia/Ukraine, a few African and Asian countries too. This way the country articles don't get cluttered. And people interested in such offers don't have to dig through the comments. Possibly even third party top-up providers can be treated in the same way. Jams206 (talk) 09:03, March 11, 2016 (UTC) about Guam Hi Jams. Thanks for your article about Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. I've added my information about it. I think it's now ready to be linked on the main page. Please check it again. I haven't been there myself and the information gathered is from the internet. So please check if it's at least plausible. About the name: As the article is called "Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands" it's a bit long for the list on the main page. Do you agree to add it only on the name of the principal island "Guam"? As they are connected somehow, users will check Guam mostly as destination. Please let me know, if everything is all right and thanks again for your work. I'm looking forward for new countries to add, but have to focus my time to updates and the changing roaming situation in the EU in the next couple of weeks. Cheers, WOLF Wolfbln (talk) 08:59, April 15, 2016 (UTC) (Admin) Alaska Hi Jams. Thanks for your comments about Alaska. I checked it and you are right. The celullar coverage there is very much different to the rest of the US. I was not aware of this. I will prepare a special article about Alaska in the next weeks with AT&T (linking to the US), comments about T-Mobile and CGI's prepaid offers specified. We can treat it as a special area of the US like Puerto Rico where I did a special article because of Claro. Please keep your info. I will sent you the draft later in August to check it. Thanks WOLF Wolfbln (talk) 18:04, July 26, 2017 (UTC) Alaska Hi Jams. I wrote a few words about Alaska in an own article. Puerto Rico has one because of Claro, so Alaska should get one because of GCI. Please check it and you may add if you know more. --->>>> Alaska Thanks WOLF Wolfbln (talk) 19:27, August 3, 2017 (UTC)